Predictors of Phytophthora diversity and community composition in natural areas across diverse Australian ecoregions

Comprehensive understanding of the patterns and drivers of microbial diversity at a landscape scale is in its infancy, despite the recent ease by which soil communities can be characterized using massively parallel amplicon sequencing. Here we report on a comprehensive analysis of the drivers of diversity distribution and composition of the ecologically and economically important Phytophthora genus from 414 soil samples collected across Australia. We assessed 22 environmental and seven categorical variables as potential predictors of Phytophthora species richness, αandβ diversity, including both phylogenetically and non‐phylogenically explicit methods. In addition, we classified each species as putatively native or introduced and examined the distribution with respect to putative origin. The two most widespread species, P. multivora and P. cinamomi, are introduced, though five of the ten most widely distributed species are putatively native. Introduced taxa comprised over 54% of Austral...